


Future Affinity

by ceredin



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Bickering, Huddling For Warmth, M/M, Pre-Slash, Unresolved Sexual Tension, kinkfromuncle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-21 05:31:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4816952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceredin/pseuds/ceredin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The age old trope of taking off their clothes and cuddling to preserve body heat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Future Affinity

**Author's Note:**

> In an ideal world this fic would be called "hypothermillya". 
> 
> Written for [this](https://kinkfromuncle.dreamwidth.org/640.html?thread=67968) prompt on the Man from UNCLE kinkmeme: _The age old trope of taking off their clothes and cuddling to preserve body heat._ With slightly more bickering and slightly less hypothermia than intended. 
> 
> Thank you to csoru for her invaluable cheerleading and the twitter crew for additional emotional support.

"Come on, Peril, keep up the act," Napoleon murmured, half encouraging, half an order, even though it wasn't necessary, not really. Illya's face was set into a scowl, mouth tight and mutinous - not towards Napoleon, but toward himself and the shivers that wracked him - as he forced one foot after the other to keep up a steady slow pace, snow crunching under his feet.

Napoleon would have slung an arm around Illya's ribs and hauled him forward if he could, but it was only early evening and the streets were not quite empty. It wouldn't do to draw attention to themselves now; not after the effort they'd put in to cross the city without picking up a tail, so they persisted at the steady, irritatingly casual pace. Shoddy intel - and they'd known it was incomplete, but it had been considered worth the risk - had led to Illya sliding silently into the near-frozen river to avoid detection and that was that. Napoleon had helped him from the water almost two hundred yards from where he'd entered, Illya offering nothing but a string of expletives in nearly half a dozen languages, muttered through chattering teeth. 

Napoleon had seen what happened; it didn't need explaining. He only hoped Gaby and Waverly had been as lucky as they were, on the far side of the river. 

Their destination was less than a hundred yards away now; via a door with paint chipped and peeling, set in a building as dilapidated as its neighbours, which opened onto a set of cramped, musty stairs that lead up into the darkness and a short hallway to a boarded up apartment downstairs. Cosy. 

As Illya shut the door behind him, plunging them into gloom, Napoleon flicked the light switch on. No response. He tried again, just in case. 

Still nothing. 

"Hm."

"These buildings have old fuse boxes," Illya said. "The fuses, they burn out easily. Look on top of the box, you'll find the wire to fix it." He pushed past Napoleon and heading up the stairs. Napoleon's hand settled on Illya's back a moment as he passed - an unconscious movement, really - the wet fabric of Illya's jacket icy under his fingers.

Napoleon found the fuse box in a cupboard below the stairs, and the wire to fix the fuses right where Illya said it would be. It was a novelty to be putting the power back on instead of the other way around, given his day job. After some quick tinkering the bare bulb flickered into life above his head, giving him a sudden, unexpected moment of memory and disconcertion and he turned it back off with a frown. Halfway up the stairs he could hear running water; Illya must be making himself at home. 

The safe house was small and freezing cold with the air of a place long unoccupied. But for the light layer of dust it was clean, however, and secure. None of the musty smell from the stairwell had permeated into the apartment.

Illya had removed his jacket, and shivered as he filled the kettle. "Here, let me," Napoleon said, reaching around and taking it from his hands.

"I am _wet_ , not a child." 

"And I'm sure that would have had more impact if your teeth weren't chattering. I'll make you some tea to help you warm up, you take off your clothes and find some blankets," Napoleon suggested, ignoring Illya's sputtered protests as he set the kettle on the stove top and rummaged through the cupboards. There was tea, some cans of food, a few other bits and pieces. Enough, in theory, to tide them over until Waverly made contact via the dead drop. 

"You want me to take off my...?" Illya started to say in an irritated tone before he stopped suddenly. Napoleon glanced over at him, raising one brow and Illya spread his hands in acquiescence. "You are right, Cowboy. I will not warm up in this damp clothing." 

"I'm sorry, I could have sworn I just heard you say I was right—"

"Don't push your luck." Illya almost smiled, and Napoleon almost smiled back. He turned his back on the damp squelch of Illya's shoes heading into the living room and continued his inventory. Not that there was much else. A small amount of crockery and cutlery, some pots and pans that had seen better days. While he had no doubt Illya had scoped the apartment out when he'd head upstairs first, Napoleon gave it a once over himself, just to make sure. In a linen closet he found some blankets to toss on the saggy-bottomed sofa with a nonchalant, "Here," before returning to the kitchen to wait for the water to boil. 

With nothing else to do, he propped his hip against the bench and watched Illya through the doorway. 

There was a small electric heater on the floor in the living room that looked like it hadn't been used since the 40s, and he watched as Illya finished inspecting the body of it carefully, then the cord, its plug and the connection to the heater body - safety first, of course - before plugging it in. 

He'd hung his jacket on the back of a threadbare armchair and sat his shoes on the floor underneath, socks draped over each shoe. It was remarkably particular of him. 

The way he then stripped out of his soggy turtleneck was economical, draping it over the arm of the chair followed by angling the heater towards his clothing. There was a lot less dignity in him taking his trousers off, the material sticking to his skin, and Napoleon couldn't help but smirk as he watched Illya struggle to get them over his feet. 

"Do you need a hand, Peril?" he called. It was only polite to ask. Illya flashed a scowl at him over his shoulder, before turning away and stripping his undershirt off. Napoleon had never really bothered to look at Illya before; not… not so much like this anyway. He wasn't as broad through the shoulders as he looked to be in the heavy jackets he preferred. Napoleon wondered if he wore the heavy jackets for that reason, but decided against it. 

He'd proof enough from their very first meeting that Illya Kuryakin didn't need to pretend to be something he wasn't. He was tall enough to be intimidating, as it was. Not to Napoleon, of course, he didn't find him remotely intimidating; annoying, entertaining and frustrating, but intimidating? Never. 

Illya crouched by the heater and Napoleon's gaze was drawn down with the movement. 

That... was interesting. Had he ever seen Illya without a shirt before? Napoleon couldn't remember. He didn't think so; he would have noticed the rough scars that striped Illya's lower back if he had, because Napoleon was nothing if not observant. The scars were old enough to be fully healed, but not old enough that they didn't still have a pinkness to them. 

He stepped forward and leaned against the doorway. "Those scars on your back. What are they from?"

Illya stood slowly and turned to look at him. There were no 'almost smiles' now. For someone standing there in nothing but his undershorts, it was a remarkably pugnacious look he gave Napoleon. "Wasn't that information in my records?" he asked. Ah, a tender point then.

"If it had have been, I wouldn't have asked," Napoleon said mildly. He was curious, not confrontational. "Did it happen during your training, too, like your face?" And he touches near his eye, tracing the exact line of Illya's scar on his own face. "Or were you punished? ...Maybe it was torture? Were you captured and tortured, is that it?" 

"I don't want to talk about it." Illya turned away again. 

Napoleon tucked his hands into his pockets and stepped into the room, his gaze lingering on the red lines. He had a pretty good idea what could have caused them, even if he didn't - yet - know why they were there. "They're not regular enough to be from a knife," he mused, "but they're too consistent to be from an accident—"

Then Illya was on him. "I said, I _don't want to talk about it_ ," Illya growled, his hand tightening around Napoleon's throat. He didn't shove Napoleon into the wall, just moved him there with his own forward momentum, holding him pinned firmly; one hand on Napoleon's throat and the other on his chest. 

Napoleon let him.

Oh, sure, for a moment he was tempted to push back. He mightn't have been winning the first - only - time they'd fought, but it didn't stop him wondering what might have happened if Oleg hadn't called Illya off. 

Or what might happen if they were in that situation again.

But Napoleon didn't push back, instead smiling blandly and reminding himself of that first time they'd been made to work together, before U.N.C.L.E., when they were just CIA and KGB. Of baiting Illya with the knowledge of who his mother had been, what she'd done to keep her son safe. He'd been ready for a fight then, too, feeling it singing in his blood as he taunted Illya. It should have worked; should have been the proof to both their handlers that cooperation between the CIA and the KGB was a stupid idea that could never succeed. He'd seen the CIA's files on Illya Kuryakin, after all. Napoleon had thought it would be _easy_ to break him. He hadn't broken then and he didn't now. (It had been a very long day. Napoleon would've been more surprised had his rather obvious needling not rated this kind of response.)

"Of course you did," he said, maintaining that mild tone. "Perhaps we should discuss this another time, then."

Illya slowly stepped back, releasing his grip on Napoleon's throat. "Perhaps," he said after a long pause. Napoleon felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle as Illya's gaze slowly swept down his body and back up again, his eyes narrowing. "Hmph," he said and turned away again. This close, Napoleon could have reached out and touched the scar tissue. His hand twitched, even, and he forced his fingers into fists. 

His willpower was saved by the whistle of the kettle. 

It was not the same as cooking, but constructing a cup of tea - fetching the tin of teabags, setting out the cups - washed, dried, and washed again, just in case - sugar, one for himself and none for Illya, then pouring the water - had a relaxing effect. 

It had been stress, he decided, though he knew he wasn't prone to it. 

In the living room, Illya was bundled up on the sofa, swathed in blankets. It was nearly impossible to tell there was a human underneath it all.

"Here," he said. "I have your tea for you."

There was an unintelligible mutter from under the blankets. 

Napoleon never failed to be intrigued by the different, little ways Illya trusted him. Napoleon wasn't quite used to being trusted this way. Oh, he knew Illya and Gaby trusted him with their lives, sometimes, and the CIA trusted him to do the job right if he wanted his freedom. But even as they worked together now, they were both ostensibly on the opposite teams and he'd never imagined he would ever be in a position where he'd have a prickly KGB agent as a colleague - friend? - _colleague_ who'd trust him enough to quite literally put aside all weapons in his presence, and assume Napoleon wasn't standing on the other side of the blanket right now with a gun pointed at his head.

"You need to drink this," Napoleon repeated, less an order this time. Cajoling. The kind of tone that Gaby used that often got frighteningly good results. "It's hot. It'll warm you up."

Illya pulled the blanket from over his head. That he looked rather charmingly disheveled as a result… that thought Napoleon would take to his grave. 

"Why are you smiling?"

"I'm not smiling." Napoleon's gaze flicked to Illya's hair, and his smile widened when Illya made a noise in the back on his throat, smoothing his hair down with one hand as he reached for the cup in Napoleon's hand with the other. Napoleon rested his fingers lightly under Illya's hand as he took it; while it might have been a shortcut to warming up, Illya dumping a cup of hot tea in his lap wasn't something Napoleon wanted to explain to Waverly.

"Thank you," Illya said politely. It hadn't escaped his notice, obviously.

"You're welcome." 

There were a few moments of silence, and a sly sideways glance showed Illya cradling the cup in his hands, his face over the steam a moment, before he raised it to his mouth. He made a faintly disgusted face. "How can this man who prides himself on his cooking skills make a poor cup of tea?"

"I'm more of a coffee man, myself." Napoleon took a sip from his own cup. It tasted all right to him. A little dusty and bland because the tea he'd used was old, and none of the blends Napoleon preferred - loose leaf, not bagged, and steeped in china - but not _bad_ per se. He couldn't be held accountable for the age of the tea. "It's not the best tea in the world, I will admit, but it's not as bad as you're making out. Do you prefer it with sugar and milk?"

Illya ignored the question. "How many bags did you use?"

"One?" 

Illy made a 'that explains it' face, and Napoleon filed that information away. _Likes his tea strong_. How had they been working together for nearly a year and Napoleon had only just discovered that? He knew Gaby liked coffee, after all, an espresso with her breakfast and the same again after her dinner, preferably with a dash of whisky and a splash of milk. He even knew Waverly drank a particular blend of Earl Grey tea, only one cup a day, black with no sugar, and could be coaxed into a nightcap and not out of information.

"What?" Illya asked.

"Hm?"

"You're frowning." Illya twitched the blankets around his shoulders, pulling them in tighter. 

Napoleon smoothed his expression, leaning back in the truly uncomfortable armchair. "Next time I'll make your tea stronger for you," he said. 

-

Napoleon was shivering himself when he returned to the safe house. He'd walked the block, and then further just in case to ensure he wasn't followed and to ensure the safe house was, in fact, safe. That he'd found a small grocers just closing up and used his excess of charm and charisma to convince the young woman to allow him a few minutes for purchases was just a coincidence. 

He could see any complaint Illya might have made about _risk, Cowboy_ dying on his lips when Napoleon unwrapped his purchases. If there was any person in the world who epitomised "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach", Napoleon suspected, it was Illya. With that in mind, he'd offered Gaby cooking lessons in a moment of generosity and she'd just smirked at him. He'd elaborated, of course, feeling unusually awkward since of all the things he was good at, talking about his colleagues about their possible or present love lives definitely wasn't one of them.

Napoleon had found the subsequent gales of laughter and the gasped words about 'an arrangement' mystifying, but that wasn't something he'd admit, because nothing he knew about Illya even indicated that he would possibly be interested in what Napoleon thought of when he heard the word 'arrangement'. 

So he'd said, "Ah," like he understood and told Gaby the offer still stood. Her first attempt at his favourite risotto had been an unmitigated disaster.

Which was a shame, really, because Illya appreciated fine food the way Napoleon wasn't sure someone from behind the Iron Curtain should. And unlike his awful, terrible taste in fashion - and Napoleon never forgot _"It doesn't have to match,"_ by God how could someone with such good taste in some things be so utterly clueless in others - his and Napoleon's tastes, when it came to food, quite nearly aligned. 

Even if most of the time he was more than content to stoke that ridiculous and unnecessarily large engine with any type of tasteless sludge put on the plate in front of him. 

It was infuriating to think about and so, resentfully, Napoleon cooked Illya steak. 

-

"How could you possibly still be cold?" Napoleon said, irritated. He'd fed Illya food and hot tea. He had more than enough blankets. There was even a small heater, heroically attempting to shift what was probably months worth of the cold of abandonment from the safe house's living room. 

"Let me think," Illya said, tapping his finger against his chin. He was idly turning another empty tea cup in his other hand. It looked tiny in his fingers. Napoleon frowned. "Maybe it's from going into a nearly frozen river, then walking halfway across the city in the snow to this poorly heated safe house?" 

Napoleon plucked the cup from Illya's hand. "As I recall you chose to do that yourself," he reminded Illya as he headed to the kitchen. 

"I did choose it. To save the mission for all of us," Illya called after him pointedly. 

"Hm. Yes, well."

"Is that a thank you?"

Napoleon didn't even dignify that with an answer. "I'm going to bed," he said instead, stretching. He heard the pop in his spine, felt the ache of tension in his shoulders. For all they'd gotten out of a bad situation extremely well didn't mean it hadn't been stressful (the only kind of stress Napoleon did). 

When Illya had gone under the water and hadn't surfaced—

Well, he could pay that no mind, Illya had come back up and it wasn't anything he needed to worry about further. He certainly hadn't been interested in driving a truck into freezing water to save him this time around.

When he came out of the bathroom - a less than pleasant affair involving freezing cold, rust-brown water splashed only where necessary - Illya was planted in the middle of the one bed in the apartment, blankets and all. 

"No," Napoleon said instantly. "Absolutely not." 

"What?" Illya's tone was bordering on insolent. And smug. Definitely smug. He wasn't starfished in the middle of the bed, but he wasn't far from it, his feet hanging off the end of the mattress.

"You should stay on the sofa," Napoleon said. "In the living room. With the heater."

"Have to turn heater off. Don't want to burn the safe house down." Illya said firmly, his pronouncement marred by a shiver. It was the first Napoleon had noticed in a while. 

"Well," Napoleon said with a resigned sigh. "Obviously if you're not going to warm up by yourself..."

Illya frowned. "What does that mean?"

Napoleon's hands went to his shirt collar. "It means, Peril, that I'm willing to take one for the team."

At that Illya looked thoroughly unimpressed. Napoleon couldn't be sure, but he thought Illya was impugning his skills and reputation with a look alone. "Oh please," Napoleon said, shrugging out of his shirt and spearing Illya with his best scornful look. "Russian spies with no self-preservation instinct are not my type." He shucked out of his trousers - in a far smoother way than Illya had his own earlier - and then shoved at Illya's shoulder to encourage him to move over from the middle of the bed. 

Illya shook his head, so Napoleon climbed under the covers, heedless of any elbows that might or might not have ended up deliberately dug into ribcages. 

"Solo—"

"Body warmth," Napoleon reminded him. He shuffled in even closer to Illya, who was clinging to his blankets with a scowl. "Roll over," he said. "We should spoon. You can be the little one."

"I do not _little spoon_ ," Illya growled. After the subsequent tussle that ensued - resulting, of course, in Illya still firmly remaining the little spoon, because Napoleon was good at this - Napoleon was greatly amused to see the other man was even more tangled up in the blankets than before. 

"Maybe, Peril, this time you do." 

"We will never mention this, ever," Illya said. 

"If you think I'd want to talk about this, then you don't know me at all, comrade."

"Hmpf. Maybe if you do this I don't know y—What are you doing?" Illya's tone was almost alarmed as Napoleon worked his hands in under the blankets, and good grief, Illya really was ridiculously tangled in the damned things - one arm snaking around Illya's waist to tug him closer. He didn't leave it there though, because that would be weird and intimate and Napoleon didn't do weird and intimate. Instead he rubbed Illya's arm. No, that was a bit weird too. With a shrug he slid his arm back around Illya's waist.

"Freezing my perfectly warm ass off to keep you warm." It was like spooning with a giant, grumpy Russian ice cube. He might have stopped shivering, but he still felt like he hadn't thawed out. "I'm going far above and beyond the call of duty here," Napoleon reminded him. "I am sure huddling for warmth is not in the U.N.C.L.E. parameters."

Illya muttered something that Napoleon could have sworn sounded like 'cuddling for warmth, not huddling'.

"Excuse me?"

"Go to sleep, Cowboy." 

-

Napoleon woke up sometime around two at the pressure on his bladder, slipping from the bed and heading for the bathroom. Once he'd washed his hands and splashed some water on his face, he padded back to the bed. He could almost sense Illya's eyes on him like a weight. For someone who had been solidly asleep when Napoleon left the bed, he wasn't now. 

Napoleon certainly didn't anticipate Illya wrapping around him like a ridiculous Russian octopus the moment he slid back under the covers, either.

"What—?"

"Now you're little spoon," Illya said, sounding immensely satisfied. 

Napoleon blinked. He would have complained, except the apartment had been ice cold and Illya, now he'd thawed, put out heat like a radiator, so to complain seemed rather disingenuous.

"Go back to sleep," Napoleon said instead.

-

He woke up slowly. Warm. 

There was someone else in the bed with him, but that was hardly unusual. Their size, that was… different, but the lack of soft curves wasn't that uncommon an occurrence either. The scrape of cheap blankets against his skin and the lumpy mattress, however, brought the events of the previous day back to him.

Illya. Of course. He'd nearly froze himself to death in the river. Hence this potentially awkward situation - for Illya, of course, not Napoleon. 

He could smooth his way through anything, after all, it was just one of his skills. Even waking up like this, sprawled out half over Illya, with his head pillowed on Illya's shoulder and one of Illya's hands resting lightly between his shoulderblades? That wasn't any kind of awkward Napoleon had to worry about.

He opened his eyes. Cold grey light filtered around the edges of the curtains. As if sensing he was awake, he felt Illya give a shuddering inhale, his fingers curling against Napoleon's back. "Solo...?" he said, his voice thick with sleep.

There was something in the way his voice curled around the two syllables of his name and Napoleon shifted, feeling Illya's arm tighten around him a little, and leaned in, pressing his face into Illya's neck, nosing up behind his ear. He didn't know why he did it, leaning into Illya like this, intimate and close. Illya smelled dusty like the cheap detergent used to wash the bedsheets, and under that was the not unpleasant smell of river water, still clinging to his hair. If Napoleon's lips touched against (and dragged across) Illya's warm skin, it wasn't intentional. If his hand drifted across the mattress until he could curl his fingers around Illya's side, skin warm under his fingers… well, that wasn't so unintentional.

He heard Illya's soft exhale. Then Illya moved, slowly and deliberately too, and Napoleon felt the touch of Illya's fingers against his own neck. Not like the night before, gentle now instead of rough with anger, as they slid up into his hair, fingernails scratching softly against his scalp. The touch sent a pleasant prickle up Napoleon's spine.

He pulled back a little. Just enough that he could look Illya in the eye and when Illya wet his lips, Napoleon let himself smile a little, wondering if he leaned in... would Illya come to meet him? 

This wasn't a thing they'd ever flirted with, a mutual desire held apart by society and circumstance. He'd never considered Illya like this and he suspected equally that Illya had never considered him either. He thought about the night before, of the feel of scars under his fingertips - but that had never happened, had it? That was all in Napoleon's head. Was this, too? He thought maybe he could kiss Illya now, just to see what it was like. To compare it to a catalogue of kisses with a hundred different people. 

He reached out, pressing his thumb against Illya's mouth. He felt the warmth of Illya's breath against his skin, saw the way his eyelids drooped. He didn't know why he was doing this; why he was tempted now, of all times, to lean in and—

Napoleon wasn't sure who pulled away first. His breath fogged in the icy air of the bedroom as he rolled from the bed, heart pounding - it was a moment of weakness, nothing more - as he methodically dressed, using routine to calm his pulse. He deliberately didn't turn to look at Illya, but that didn't mean Napoleon didn't catch a glimpse of him sitting on the edge of the bed in the mirror of the dresser. 

He wasn't sure what to read of Illya's expression. It was… dazed, maybe. Almost perplexed. He used the excuse of his tie to watch as Illya blinked slowly, ran a hand through his hair, before he stretched, his arms blocking any further expression from Napoleon's view. When he lowered his arms, anything that might have been on his face was gone. 

Napoleon's gaze slid away from the mirror when Illya stood - still only clad in his undershorts, unbothered now, it seemed, by the chill bite in the air - and ambled past, through to the living room where his own clothing was.

"I'm going to check the dead drop," Napoleon announced as he shrugged into his jacket. It wasn't a record time for getting dressed, but it must have been close. 

"Hm?" Illya said, looking up questioningly from his clothing he was testing for dampness. His expression cleared, like the words Napoleon had said had finally reached his brain. "Good. Maybe we hear from Gaby and Waverly and will be able to go somewhere less… here." He made a face and gestured with his undershirt. "And with dry clothes. Do you need back up?"

It was as if nothing unusual had even happened between them. Because nothing _had_ happened, Napoleon reminded himself. Nothing at all. 

"From you, Peril?" Napoleon couldn't help his slight smile. "Never." 


End file.
